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Yes it does...No it doesn't...
Yes it does...No it doesn't...Yes it does...No it doesn't...
Yes it does...No it doesn't...Yes it does...No it doesn't...
Yes it does...No it doesn't...Yes it does...No it doesn't...
Yes it does...No it doesn't...Yes it does...No it doesn't...
Yes it does...No it doesn't...

Look, this isn't an argument
Yes it is.
No it isn't.
Yes it is.
No it isn't.
Yes it is.
No it isn't.
Well, if I'm going to argue with you I have to take a contrary position,
Yes, but that doesn't mean the automatic naysaying of...

I was a national level wrestler in HS as well as a 2nd degree BB in Shotokan Karate. I have some training BJJ and Boxing as well.

Just take a look at some Christian Tissier videos, that guy generates force with his tech. While you can tell some of the guys are "going with it" (for their own safety) if you watch closely some of these guys are getting utterly destroyed and are not "going with it".

So, is Aikido a sport combat MA? No. Is it a practical self defense system that will work against most people? Yes.

I have a feeling that if Mr. Tissier was faced off against some of todays top MMA fighters he'd to just fine.

Hi,
Any body know how Mr Tissier handled himself when he ventured into the Kick boxing arena?I believe he had a go in this M.A.Joe.

HILLARIOUS..
Dana White will be the first to tell you UFC is NOT No Holds Barred.. Old UFC was close, but new UFC is an organized sport.. Old UFC does not allow biting or eye gouging or ear tears, so it's not No Holds Barred; that's just testo charged promotional rhetoric..

Anyway, boxing and BJJ don't teach how to deal with multiple attackers.. So not every tool is designed for all problems..

If you want No Holds Barred self defense, learn Krav Maga or Russian Systema.. In fact, go live in the bad side of Mexico for a bit of 24/7 constant alert training.. Different strokes for different blokes..

Aikido, as I see it, is like other pajamas-and-colored belts martial arts, insofar as it does not work outside the dojo the same way it does inside the dojo. If you listen to Nishio Sensei, he says that for a "grappling" art like judo or aikido to work in a fight, it needs to be applied primarily as atemi. He tells the story of two expert judoka who got jumped by six thugs; the first and last of the six got thrown, and the middle four had to be subdued with strikes.

I'm not a guy who treats UFC MMA like it's the holy grail of martial arts, but there is a lot to learn from it. Watch them compete: most of these guys are either BJJ black belts or D1 college wrestling champions; these are some of the best grapplers in the world. But what do they do 95% percent of the time when they get punched? Either (a) dodge it or (b) punch back. Is it because they're not good enough at putting locks on? No, they're better at that than almost anyone in the world. It's just not realistic to try to catch every strike, or even most strikes, and put them into locks.

I honestly believe that there is real self-defense value to (good) aikido training. I wouldn't train if I didn't. But anyone who thinks they are going to go out into the street and catch every punch up in a lock or throw has another thing coming.

As this thread is too long, I did not read every post and opinion contained it. So to cut to the chase I can tell you from experience that it does work. in 2003 and 2004 I was working security on the midnight shift at a housing complex in a very bad area of St.Louis. Over those two years I had three regretable occasions in which I was forced to defend myself. I came through ok because I reacted out of instinct from training as well as a bit of fear. This does not mean that I could defeat a boxer or any fighter of great skill, it just means that by using my training I was able to fend them off until they gave up or in one case help arrived in the form of the police.
If I had no training experience God only knows what would have happened. The moves and techniques that we take for granted on the mat come as a real surprise to an uneducated attacker.
This is just my experience and I am grateful to be out of that business.

Oh, don't worry Chris. This isn't the only "does Aikido work" thread. There are tons of them. I wouldn't bother to start a new one. Why would it be any different than the old ones? Everyone who actually knew anything and had something to say did so a long time ago and now ignores these threads like the plague. These threads are like the zombies that never die.

Look at the number of views... A thread that might have had some depth, like the one about offensive moves in Aikido will pretty much fade away after a couple of thousand views. Only a few people have much to say about it. (...)

Quote:

Dave Gallagher wrote:

As this thread is too long (...) This does not mean that I could defeat a boxer or any fighter of great skill, it just means that by using my training I was able to fend them off until they gave up or in one case help arrived in the form of the police.
If I had no training experience God only knows what would have happened. The moves and techniques that we take for granted on the mat come as a real surprise to an uneducated attacker.

I quote George because I always felt him like the best asset to this forum - depth of analysis and acute intelligence.
I quote Dave also because he makes a lot of sense: "uneducated attacker" is oftentimes the keyword here.

Giving for granted that I am not among the "Only a few people have much to say about it" which George mentioned, what surprised me in coming here after a long absence is seeing this type of issue still on the forefront and so much alive (pages, contributions, and pageviews...).

The fact in itself could be dismissed like the interest or initiatives of mere troublemakers - or it can also be seen as something that by now is so deep rooted in Aikido, that the reason it keeps popping and eliciting so much interest may rely on the fact Aikido does has this issue, and probably it has never been addressed (whether this is out of denegation or out of the fact it is hopeless to fix indeed, I don't know).

My answer to this, which can be agreed upon or dismissed (I won't take any offence) but that anyway is my answer, is that it is entirely and uniquely a matter of how you train.

Aikido lends iteslf to many uses - one is also of being a mild work out with a dash of self defense in it. It is fine, and no one pursuing it with that purpose in mind should be belittled for it - however I agree that pursuing it with that purpose in mind and yet entertain the self-delusional idea that you are doing martial self-defense is intolerable: makes me nervous lol.

So, if you want an aikido that may "work" in a real situation: it depends uniquely and entirely on how you train. If you want to emphasize the martial side of it, then you have to train martially. Your attackers must attack you indeed, and have no complacency: if you can throw them, you throw them, but if you can't, they won't help you of one tad.
Your attackers must keep attacking, and when you grab one of their arms must not stay there waiting unless you're fast enough: they must keep reacting and attempting to get at you.

If your attackers throw punches at you, it can be done safely with open hands and at chest level - but, then, aside from this safety measure, all the rest must be determined like hell.
This setting should belong to your standard and default routine.

It is more important, to this purpose, to learn how to live within a thunderstorm than to apply the technique with a precision that thunderstorms don't leave room for.

Do that long enough, fail with that long enough, and you will develop an aikido that works. I consider this the solution.
In all the other cases, we can keep populating this thread :-)

Aikido, as I see it, is like other pajamas-and-colored belts martial arts, insofar as it does not work outside the dojo the same way it does inside the dojo. If you listen to Nishio Sensei, he says that for a "grappling" art like judo or aikido to work in a fight, it needs to be applied primarily as atemi. He tells the story of two expert judoka who got jumped by six thugs; the first and last of the six got thrown, and the middle four had to be subdued with strikes.

I'm not a guy who treats UFC MMA like it's the holy grail of martial arts, but there is a lot to learn from it. Watch them compete: most of these guys are either BJJ black belts or D1 college wrestling champions; these are some of the best grapplers in the world. But what do they do 95% percent of the time when they get punched? Either (a) dodge it or (b) punch back. Is it because they're not good enough at putting locks on? No, they're better at that than almost anyone in the world. It's just not realistic to try to catch every strike, or even most strikes, and put them into locks.

I honestly believe that there is real self-defense value to (good) aikido training. I wouldn't train if I didn't. But anyone who thinks they are going to go out into the street and catch every punch up in a lock or throw has another thing coming.

Do wrestling or BJJ even teach people how to deal with punches? Maybe that's why they dodge, their training doesn't actually teach anything else. Minor point.

After I posted that I checked on the googles, I know I should done that first. In any case, the question is on the first page of returns for Tae Kwon Do, Karate, Krav Maga, and Boxing, I stopped checking after that. Just search Does xxxxx work in a fight.
So my humble opinion is that the question is a result of normal human self doubt and fear. Even after training in a martial art for many years a real physical confrontation is scary to most people. So they need some assurances that what they are training for will serve them if they need it to. The beauty of Aikido is that it teaches avoidance and harmony, those two principles will likely save your life better than a having George Forman upper cut.

Even after training in a martial art for many years a real physical confrontation is scary to most people.

precisely the point.
Precisely the reason because Aikido is felt as not effective.
Persons intereseted in attaining a martial goal, must train martially.

90% of a martial oriented training should not be geared to learn a proper techinique, but how to live within the thunderstorm.

If you cannot live in the thunderstorm, it won't matter how many techiniques you know, how many years you trained, how perfect the theorem is. You will fail because you will have no focus, and the first hit on your teeth will make all assumptions vanish in thin air and make you prey of all the winds, vultures and wolverines that inhabit the thunderstorm.

Since aikido is not competitive, we lack the thunderstorm. No thunderstorm attendance, no real fight abilities.

I love this thread. It's just like that old sweater you find while you're rummaging through the attic, and you say to yourself, "Hmm, why did I ever put this away?" so you take it out and wear it, and after about fifteen minutes you know why you didn't want it any more (because it's itchy or lumpy or poorly fitting or ugly or whatever). Whatever was wrong with it in the first place, it never gets any better, and letting it sit in the attic for a year or so doesn't improve it.

well the whole point with the thread boils down to this: aikidokas are not able to come to terms with the fact it is not the thread to be ineffective, but aikido that is ineffective in a real situation.

Hard point to acknowledge for most of us. It is the fact we cannot admit to ourselves that point, that makes the thread unsurpassable and we keep watching at it as something that visits only us for some malicious reason we have no responsibility for.

well the whole point with the thread boils down to this: aikidokas are not able to come to terms with the fact it is not the thread to be ineffective, but aikido that is ineffective in a real situation.

Hard point to acknowledge for most of us. It is the fact we cannot admit to ourselves that point, that makes the thread unsurpassable and we keep watching at it as something that visits only us for some malicious reason we have no responsibility for.

Alberto:

I respectfully disagree with your position (one that you, yourself do not wholly agree with). How YOU train in Aikido will directly translate to how effective YOUR Aikido is in a "real situation." My Aikido has yet to fail me and I simply seem to be getting better. I have in my dojo (now and in the past) boxers, karateka, bjj, etc. and I do not seem to have a problem using MY Aikido to stop their attacks.

If a person practices their martial art as simply a stylized vision of that art, then the style frequently fails when "reality" diverges from those stylized movements. If a person practices so that the stylized movements are adaptable templates, then the outcome is very, very different.

Bottom line, regardless of the art, it is how the person practices and applies the art that matters more than the art itself.

I respectfully disagree with your position (one that you, yourself do not wholly agree with). How YOU train in Aikido will directly translate to how effective YOUR Aikido is in a "real situation." My Aikido has yet to fail me and I simply seem to be getting better. I have in my dojo (now and in the past) boxers, karateka, bjj, etc. and I do not seem to have a problem using MY Aikido to stop their attacks.

If a person practices their martial art as simply a stylized vision of that art, then the style frequently fails when "reality" diverges from those stylized movements. If a person practices so that the stylized movements are adaptable templates, then the outcome is very, very different.

Bottom line, regardless of the art, it is how the person practices and applies the art that matters more than the art itself.

Regards,

Marc Abrams

that's what I said in my previous post (same page): if you want to focus on martial goals, you have to train martially.
If you do, aikido may work.

I mentioned the thunderstorm exactly because in a thunderstorm stylized approaches fail utterly.
You may train all you want, but if you training never reproduces a determined attack, once facing one your aikido will fail.

Then, the sweater that Mary rightly produced as an allegory, is no longer this thread: that sweater, is Aikido.

If you want it to work, you have to fight with it a long time, because the nature of aikido is that of being ineffective. The amount of efforts that you need to put in it in order to make it be usable, is more than doubled.
You wear it, you remove it, you hate it, you try to fix it and you eventually realize it is hopeless. You take it back, you quit it again - hopeless.
Aikido is flawed, is inherently broken. It is all in the way you train that you may make something out of it.

And to be sure, the worst aikidoka of all was (aside me), of course, Ueshiba. He knew aikido, and yet he did nothing to teach it martially. When we see his pupils training, we often see them training exactly in that utterly fictional manner that yields an utterly unusable aikido that then generates this type of thread, that exists only in aikido forums for no other martial art raises so insistently this type of issue.

Bottom rock: we agree, actually. Not that the other way round would have worried us, of course.

How come YOU get to be the boss of what an 11-year-old, bazillion-page, gazillion-post thread boils down to? What makes YOU the one who gets to say what the whole point is?

Because I am not led by self delusion and anger Mary. The point is there in clear sight: everybody who can see, sees it. Not just me.
Relax, and you will see it also. Because there must be a reason this type of thread gets produced only on Aikido forums. The explanation cannot be that, for unknown reasons, there is just a bigger amount of morons in aikido...